Something Bad Happened
by Leia 96
Summary: He doesn't know what the word rape means. He just knows his sister is crying, and maybe it's his turn to comfort her for a change. Oneshot, Callie and Jude immediately post-Liam.


It was past bedtime, but Jude had ninety-eight pages left of _Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince_ , and he wasn't about to stop now. It didn't matter that he was ten years old and it was one thirty-four a.m. and that his foster mother would kill him if she saw the light from the lamp shining under his door, because he could not stop until he knew what happened.

That was why he heard the shower come on, and why he wondered who was showering so late and why. But _Harry Potter_ waits for no man, so he let himself forget the shower as he read. He forgot about it until he suddenly heard the water shut off, and, realizing it had been on for an unusually long time, checked the clock. Two sixteen—someone had been in the shower for over forty minutes.

That was weird. Of course, their foster parents would have used the master bathroom, which meant it was either Callie or their foster brother. Call it instinct, but somehow Jude just knew it was his sister.

Reluctantly, Jude closed his mostly-finished book and listened for a moment. He heard the bathroom door open, and he heard quiet footsteps headed toward Callie's room, confirming his suspicion. Once again, he wondered what she was doing showering in the middle of the night, and why her typical fifteen-minute shower had been almost three times that tonight.

Impulsively, he crept out of bed and to the door. Sure, she would scold him for being up so late, but he was curious now. Of course, she might make him go to bed, meaning no more _Harry Potter_ until morning, but it was getting late anyway, so he decided to risk it.

He opened his door a crack and peeked his head out. Callie's hair was dripping and she wore nothing but an oversized t-shirt that fell halfway down her thighs. She had a wad of clothes tucked under one arm as she reached for her door, right across from his.

"Callie?" he asked quietly, and she turned around suddenly so that he could see her face.

He could immediately tell something was wrong. Her eyes were wide and wild, and one of her cheeks was dark red, almost purple—bruised. Now that he looked, there were bruises on what was visible of her arms, as well.

"What happened?" She stood for a moment like a deer in the headlights, eyes wide, before she shook herself.

"Nothing," she said, tucking a dripping strand of hair behind her ear. "Go back to bed, baby."

But Jude wasn't dumb, and he knew his sister very well.

"What happened to your face?" She took the hand that wasn't holding the wad of clothes and let gentle fingers probe the blossoming bruise, but shook her head.

"Oh, it's just… I just…" Her voice shook, and Jude felt his heart pound. He liked these people, he'd thought they were good. Callie had been beaten by the people in their home before this, but for almost two years they'd lived here with the Olmsteads, who had been nothing but nice to them.

"Did… did Richard…?" he asked, leaving it open, wondering if their foster father had a side to him that they just hadn't seen yet.

Callie shook her head, and Jude didn't say anything else, just watching wet spots spread on the front of her shirt where her hair rested. Callie reached a shaking hand out to her doorknob and just said quietly, "You should go to bed." But Jude's spider senses were tingling, and he stood his ground.

"If it wasn't Richard, then what happened?" He watched her big brown eyes fill with tears, but she just shook her head and disappeared into her room.

Jude stood frozen in the doorway, looking at the spot where she had just been. Something was _wrong._

 _Harry Potter_ forgotten, Jude crept across the hall to her closed door, debating whether to knock or to let her sleep and ask about it tomorrow. His decision was made for him when he heard her break out into big, shaking sobs. He knocked twice and opened the door without waiting for a response.

She sat against the closet door, the wad of clothes on the floor next to her, hugging her knees to her chest. She looked up at him when he came in, and her eyebrows were crumpled and her trembling lips pressed tightly together. Tears streaked her cheeks.

"Something bad happened," she whispered, and then she fought to hold back a sob.

He'd never seen his sister like this. He'd seen her hurt, he'd seen her sad, he'd seen her scared, but he'd never seen…whatever this was. It frightened him, but she so often comforted him that he figured it was his turn to do the same for her.

Cautiously he crept toward her, sitting down on the floor next to her.

"What happened?" he asked, and she buried her face in her knees. He put a hand on her back, and she turned her head to look at him, unbruised cheek resting on her knees.

"I don't even know how to tell you," she murmured, and Jude just sat quietly, waiting. She took a breath and exhaled slowly. "It was Liam," she said finally, and Jude looked away. Liam had always been nice to them. He had thought their foster brother liked them.

"What did he do?" he asked, looking up at her. She looked thoughtful for a moment, and he could tell that, distraught though she clearly was, she was carefully considering her answer.

"Do you know what the word 'rape' means?" she asked quietly, looking straight ahead. Jude wracked his brain, but it wasn't familiar. He shook his head and she sighed. "It's a… bad thing." He waited for her to elaborate, and after a moment, she did. "It's forcing someone to have sex when they don't want to."

Jude didn't say anything. He knew about sex, of course—he was ten years old, after all. He knew about making babies, and which parts went where. No one ever talked to him about it though, not after the initial conversations. Certainly no one had ever mentioned that someone could _make_ you do it.

"It's one of the worst things you can do to someone," Callie explained quietly when he didn't say anything.

"Liam did that to you?" he asked, and she nodded silently, a tear sliding down her cheek. Jude put his hand on hers and let it sit there a moment.

"I feel dirty," she admitted after some silence, voice breaking. "I thought a shower would help, but…" Her face crumpled like she was going to cry again, but though tears filled her eyes, no sound came out.

Jude didn't really understand. He knew he didn't understand, because when she had told him about the word 'rape,' what he had pictured didn't really warrant this reaction—and his sister was not an over-reactor. So he knew he didn't understand exactly what had happened, but he also knew his sister was sad, and he wanted to make her feel better.

Jude scooted closer to her and leaned his head onto her shoulder gently, cautiously.

"Are you going to tell Richard and Elaine?" he asked. "Liam would get in trouble. Or you could tell Billy, he'll put us in a different home." He felt more than saw Callie shake her head.

"When Liam tells them I'm lying, who do you think they'll believe?" It made Jude angry to know that she was right.

"It's not fair," he insisted. She sighed, defeated.

"It's just how it is." He didn't have anything to say to that, so he just sat. When he looked back at her, she was staring blankly ahead, and it occurred to him that maybe, just this once, she needed him to take care of her.

"Do you want to go to bed? It's late," he said carefully. She blinked slowly and shook her head.

"I can't sleep." But she looked tired, more tired than he'd ever seen her. Maybe even tired in a world-weary way that sleep alone couldn't fix.

"Do you want to sleep in my bed?" he offered. Not that it could fix anything, but he remembered many a night where she'd eased his nightmares by inviting him into her bed—it was the least he could do. She smiled a little, sad, half-smile.

"You're sweet," was all she said.

They didn't end up going to his room. Although _Harry Potter_ had been long forgotten, he was exhausted, and wanted nothing more than to go to sleep. But he instinctually knew that he couldn't leave Callie alone—not when she was so sad and so scared and so tired—and so he sat with her, the two of them leaned against the closet door in her bedroom. Callie didn't say much, and Jude followed her lead. He just left his hand on hers and snuck furtive glances in her direction. When the clock on her wall said three-thirty, he saw that she had finally fallen asleep.

Carefully, he sat up and went to her bed, pulling two pillows and her comforter over to the corner where she sat. He set a pillow on the floor next to her and pushed her until she was no longer sitting, but lying with her head on the pillow. He set his next to hers and lay down beside her, then spread the comforter over both of them.

Exhausted as he was, he let his eyes close at once, but as he did, he caught one last glimpse of that bruise on her cheek.

Liam had done that to her—that and more. Liam, who had seemed the perfect big brother, and who Richard and Elaine certainly thought was the perfect son, had done that and more to his big sister. And he didn't really understand what rape was—he knew that—but he understood that he was angry, angry that anyone could make her look so defeated, or feel so dirty she took a forty-minute shower and still didn't feel clean.

For four years, Callie had protected Jude. He'd watched her take beatings for him, or spare him bad news. He knew there were probably things she'd done for him that he wouldn't ever even know about. But he was ten years old now—he wasn't a little kid anymore, and he was old enough to know that his fifteen-year-old sister was not infallible. And as he drifted from wakefulness to sleep, he wondered if maybe it shouldn't just be her job to protect him, but _their_ jobs to protect _each other._

He never knew it, but she awoke not twenty minutes later from the first of many nightmares, breathing hard, and raced to the bathroom to vomit. Shaking, she rinsed her mouth, examined the bruise on her cheek in the mirror, and then walked back to her room, moving stiffly from soreness.

It was when she opened the door again and saw Jude lying on the floor in front of her closet that she remembered her conversation with him, and the way he sat with her for more than an hour until she fell asleep.

She didn't think she could sleep again, but she lay down on the floor next to him anyway, resting her head on the pillow next to his, and sliding under the comforter. He was curled into a tight ball, the way he always slept, and she pulled him close to her, draping an arm over him.

Sleep didn't come again for many hours, but there on the floor in front of the closet, listening to Jude's steady breaths and feeling his bony arm under hers, Callie felt blind panic give way, just a little, to something slightly more manageable. She couldn't quite believe what had happened earlier that night—that someone she thought had loved her and wanted to be with her had done something so horrific. But Jude was there, at her side, sleeping on the floor next to her—all of ten years old, and her entire world. And lying there, it occurred to her that, just maybe, she was his entire world, too. It didn't fix anything, but it certainly didn't hurt, either.


End file.
